Surviving the Big Dramas of History

You can cut all the flowers

but you cannot keep Spring from coming.

Pablo Neruda

Palestine is ablaze these days with burning tires and tear gas soaked protestors. This Arab Spring has been dominated by  prisoners on hunger strikes, shootings of youth, the resurrection of tent cities on Palestinian land. Then last Saturday a newly detained prisoner died due to what appears torture. In between these large events of life under occupation I’ve been remembering my mother whose birthday was February 24. I choose to honor her memory by remembering her on the day she was born and not on the day she died.

To honor her and the artist she was and the poet she inspired I decided to take a trip out of the city. Taking a trip to Sebastya was the perfect way to honor my mother the painter and amateur historian who brought me up to appreciate not just art but the way color and shape define space, the way light changes everything, the way history gives texture and meaning to our lives. While other kids were learning their alphabet my siblings and I were also learning our color wheel---primary and complementary colors. While other kids associate home with the smell of baked goods, I associate home with linseed oil and 1/2 opened tubes of paint with names like “burnt sienna” and “cobalt blue.” Though I did not grow up to be a painter like my mother, I did grow up to be a person finely attuned to the visual world who needs beauty the way some need food.  I grew into a poet, a storyteller, a preacher. Here is my account then of my day in northern Palestine, in lovely Sebastya.

With an assortment of Palestinians and internationals, doctors and teachers, students, diplomats and relief workers, and one lone minister we headed north out of the city toward the almond blossoms toward the legendary and mythic Sebastya, a city occupied by the Caananites, the Greeks, the Herodians, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans, and now the Muslims.  The successive occupation of so many cultures has left a wealth of ruins and poignant stories in this walled city on a hill, on the road to the sea.

Our first stop on our pilgrimage was Al Lub’ban for breakfast under the almond blossoms. We stood and shared a lovely Palestinian breakfast of falafels, bread, tomatoes, tea and coffee while taking in the panorama view of green and blossoming fields and mountains complete with the ruins of a Ottoman dwelling where now a farmer squats with his small dog. Dr. Ali Qleib, our poet/guide, told us that this farmer was fighting to stay on the land so the nearby settlement would not take it.

If a writer were to compose a successful piece

describing the almond blossom,

the fog would rise from the hills, and people, all the people,

would say:

This is it.

These are the words of our national anthem.

Mahmoud Darwish

After our filling breakfast under the blossoms we continued north 18 kilometers past Nabulus to Sebastya, to the fortress on the hill still lined with Roman columns. However, this is not Europe so all outings in Palestine are subject to the whims and sudden restrictions of Israel for “security.” So just as we were beginning the steep ascension by the western entrance, we were told we must enter through the east because there was “trouble” in the city. What was not said is that this was because a prisoner was beaten and killed the day before while being detained. What was not said is that this is Purim and the settlers sometimes use this occasion to attack Palestinians. What was not said is that there is an uprising happening throughout all of the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. So much for trying to get away and enjoy a day free of the pressure and violence of occupation.

Before turning back from our western ascent I took this picture of these Roman columns that once marked this imperial entrance.

Despite this reminder of present day imperial power, it is beautiful here with red poppies dotting the landscape intersperced with batches of purple lupins and delicate yellow wild flowers. It is spring here in the mountains and I am reminded of Rumi, “We are made of the sky’s cloth and everything is soul and flowering. I open and fill with love and what is not love evaporates.” I try and let the lounging soldiers with their hands on the trigger of their guns “evaporate” but they too are part of the landscape I’ve come to expect but am always still so surprised to run into. 

It is misty, beautiful, and sad as we approach the forlorn ruins, the remainders of civilizations that have come and gone with their  acropolis, stoic columns, and watch towers.

When we arrived outside the ruins of an old Byzantine church, we came across two graves. These are the two graves of the last Christians who were buried here over ten years ago next to the ruins because there was nowhere else for them to be put in this now Muslim dominated city. Their graves too are reminders that the Christians are literally perishing from this place where there used to be five Greek Orthodox churches and where the current Archbishop Hanna Attalah comes from.

Before exploring the city, we shared a wonderful meal at a local restaurant.  We ate chicken with sumac on oil drenched taboon bread with lots of accompanying delicious salads.  Ali, knowing I was a minister, asked me to bless the bread.  Having skipped church to go on this excursion, I happily broke the bread and remembered that wherever and whenever bread is broken so is the living Christ. My blessing was short and sweet and went something like this: “The bread of life for all. May we be hungry for justice and fed and nourished for the work of peacemaking. Let us give thanks and praise. Amen”

After lunch we made our way to the Crusader church through a gauntlet of young men on one side and soldiers on the other. It appeared our presence and the lovely young women in our midst may have diverted a possible hostile encounter for a few brief moments.

When we arrived at the Crusader cathedral with the elegant pointed Ottoman minaret gracing its collapsed arches that once sought to touch the heavens, I become aware of the way sacred space sometimes overlaps over time becoming shared holy ground.

As beautiful as it was to walk among these Hellenistic and Roman/Byzantine ruins, I was also drawn to the Biblical story that is said to have taken place here. I was drawn to the idea that John the Baptist’s bones were brought here to rest after he was beheaded by Salome after her dance of the seven veils.

Now I have a special affinity for Jesus’ cousin who leapt in Elizabeth’s womb and who prepared the way. As a person who finds herself sometimes calling out in the wilderness, John holds a special place in my canon of prophets. I was surprised to learn that he is also highly revered by my Muslim sisters and brothers too. He along with his parents Zachariah and Elizabeth are important figures in the Qu’ran. Yahya, John, is especially revered as the man who shall live again. The Nabi Yaha Mosque which shares the cathedral’s courtyard bears his name. The ruins and history declare this sacred ground and the orange tree nods in agreement.

Then like a painter with a very large canvas or a poet with a vivid imagination I paint those lonely Christian graves into this protected place. They belong here. These baptized Christians deserve to have their bones treated with respect too. I place them lovingly under the orange tree near the domed chapel.

After our visit to the Cathedral and the mosque we roamed around the picturesque village through winding alleys peering into deep pits and on occasion saw the scattered stones and capitols from the Greco-Roman period. We also got a sense of the glory days of the Mameluke and Ottoman family compound, how the families lived together.

As we walked down the mountain back to the bus with the misty view of the almond trees in the distance, I was struck by the contrast of these ancient stones with the pink blossoms of the flowering trees, with permanence and impermanence, with what appears to be moveable and immoveable, what lasts and what stays.

Dr. Ali Qleib put it well in a recent article on Sebastya for Palestine Today. His words capture not only the mood of this day but my hope that we all will survive the big drama of history unfolding now:

“Like the almond blossom, civilization is a delicate moment of great beauty, exuding a faint fragrance. History ebbs and flows. One week it is in full bloom. The next week its petals drift, scattered by the ferocious, freezing cold, wet February storms. The Palestinian peasant, like the deep-rooted evergreen and olive tree survives the big dramas of history.”

May it be so. May it be so.